The use of illegitimate copies of software programs is not only a copyright infringement but also a severe concern of software producers and software developers, since they loose a lot of money due to the un-authorized distribution of their intellectual property. Therefore, a plurality of techniques have been developed, which identify illegitimate copies of software programs and, afterwards, disallowing certain features of the software program, for instance update functionality or online play or preventing the overall usage of the software program. However, with these known techniques it is only possible to hinder a user of an illegitimate copy of the software program to use it or at least to decrease the usability of the software program.
Thus, there is a need for providing a method and a system for changing a user of an illegitimate copy of the software program into a user of a legitimate copy of the software program.
The object is solved by a method for replacing an illegitimate copy of the software program with a legitimate copy according to claim 1, a corresponding system according to claim 13 and a software patch according to claim 15.
Further embodiments are defined in the dependent claims.
Further details of the invention will become apparent from the consideration of the drawings and ensuing description.